Troubleshooting Business Rules

Business Rules is composed of two components: a client side JavaScript and a server side workflow. You can use these queries to find out the details about this:

LinqPad – Query and result

FetchXml Builder – Query and result

One gotcha with the business rule is that its behavior will deviate, if a field that is required by the business rule is removed on the form. I will demonstrate this, with the business rule below.

This business rule sets the “Contracting Unit” to required, if Order Type is “Work Based”. Below are the screenshots of the form in two different scenarios:

With “Order Type” present on the form

Without “Order Type” present on the form

As you can see, “Contracting Unit” is set to required, only if the “Order Type” field is present on the form, even if the value of “Order Type” is “Work based”. At present, there seems to no check in the form customisation area to prevent a field from being removed, if is required by a business rule. This is how the “Contracting Unit is required” business rule, gets translated into JavaScript.

When you debug this using Chrome Dev Tools, you can easily see why the “Contracting Unit” field is not being set to required.

To assist developers who are troubleshooting why a business rule is not working, I have developed this simple script to run in the DevTools console, that lists the fields that are required by the Business Rules, but are not present in the form. This has to be run in the context of ClientApiWrapper IFrame.

It is saying that “Order Type” should be present in the form, as it is required by a Business Rule that is running on the form. It uses an unsupported internal method to identify this information, and so I recommend that it be used in devtools console only.